Although the protection of secrets is often vital to the survival of organizations, at other times organizations can benefit by deliberately leaking secrets to outsiders. We explore how and why this is the case. We identify two dimensions of leaks: (1) whether the information in the leak is factual or concocted and (2) whether leaks are conducted overtly or covertly. Using these two dimensions, we identify four types of leaks: informing, dissembling, misdirecting, and provoking. We also provide a framework to help managers decide whether or not they should leak secrets.

Many companies derive their competitive advantage from the use and protection of trade secrets. This means that if these companies' trade secrets are misappropriated, it can be extremely costly and even jeopardize their survival. In order to try to prevent employees from inappropriately divulging trade secrets, companies will often implement rules and procedures such as non-disclosure agreements that limit what employees are allowed to do with trade secrets. In spite of the prevalence of these procedures, billions of dollars in trade secrets are leaked and stolen every year, most often by companies' own employees. We argue that a key to the effective protection of trade secrets lies in the creation of positive secrecy climates, wherein keeping organizational secrets is strongly valued by employees and seen as a part of their formal role responsibilities. We explain how managers can develop positive secrecy climates in their organizations, and outline the risks and potential rewards of these climates.

The internet is fertile ground for multisided platforms that articulate the production of goods or the execution of services between third parties, thus relying on value co-creation as their core business model mechanism. However, an understanding of co-creation that underlies dynamics and implications for business model design and innovation is still dispersed and fragmented along a number of literature streams. This article aims to provide an understanding of the value co-creation process in web-based multisided platforms. A conceptual framework is proposed based on the combination of an analysis of a comprehensive systematic literature review, interviews with academics and entrepreneurs, and an analysis of secondary data on representative cases of multisided business models based on value co-creation. We offer a model of value co-creation in multisided platforms and advance a number of propositions regarding value dynamics, including the role of the focal firm in defining and maintaining value creation, propositions, and capture structures with consequences to monetization schemes and actors' contributions and motivations for value co-creation. This article contributes to the understanding of the co-creation phenomenon, especially in multiple actor interaction regimes, and raises a number of suggestions for future research.

Stealth, or undercover, marketing involves the disguising of marketing communications that marketers undertake to purposefully influence their audiences without the audiences being aware of these activities. Inasmuch as stealth marketing involves secrecy (the withholding of information) and miscommunication (the communication of partial or misleading information), it is at least on some level duplicitous. Duplicity is the double act of secrecy and misrepresentation. In this article we explore duplicity in marketing communications. Specifically, we deconstruct the movie The Joneses to explore the various ways in which both marketers and consumers employ duplicity in their communications-to each other and themselves. We conclude by exploring the ethical and functional issues duplicity raises, and suggest that irony is one way in which duplicity can be ethically and productively employed.

Recent advancements in robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and sensors now enable machines to automate activities that once seemed safe from disruption-including tasks that rely on higher-level thinking, learning, tacit judgment, emotion sensing, and even disease detection. Despite these advancements, the ethical issues of business automation and artificial intelligence-and who will be affected and how-are less understood. In this article, we clarify and assess the cultural and ethical implications of business automation for stakeholders ranging from laborers to nations. We define business automation and introduce a novel framework that integrates stakeholder theory and social contracts theory. By integrating these theoretical models, our framework identifies the ethical implications of business automation, highlights best practices, offers recommendations, and uncovers areas for future research. Our discussion invites firms, policy makers, and researchers to consider the ethical implications of business automation and artificial intelligence when approaching these burgeoning and potentially disruptive business practices.

In 2015, Charles Shao, chairman of Huaxia, considered the alternatives to ensure sustainable growth of Huaxia and rebuild the overall health of China's dairy industry. He came to China in 2004 and set up Huaxia dairy farm with the goal to build a world-class dairy farm in China. In 2015, Huaxia had three farms in operation with about 20,000 cows (including 7,200 milking cows) and daily production of 220 tons of raw milk. It sold most of its raw milk to top dairy brands in China while selling a small volume of dairy products under its own premium brand Wondermilk. Besides running his own dairy farms, he had been providing free training in dairy farm management to industry peers, developing a milk-traceability system, and set up a consulting firm to offer dairy management services. Should he continue to invest in these initiatives that benefitted the whole industry or focus resources on growing his own business?

The president of Bankinter, a Spanish bank, decided that the time was right to expand. At the time, the Spanish economy was experiencing a severe downturn and the banking system was going through major reforms. He believed that growth could occur either organically or through acquisitions — as long as the target business complemented Bankinter’s present operations and preserved the company’s values and organizational culture. His goal was to choose one option, while determining the price that should be paid if an acquisition offer was made. In this case, the purchase would be funded entirely through the issue of additional shares. The offer price would have to be justified to existing shareholders, who would only agree if the acquisition created value for them. At the same time, the success of the merger depended on the offer being accepted, so the price had to be attractive to the target company’s shareholders.

In March 2015, the managing director of VariCut Electronics Component Company in Shanghai, China, was contemplating whether the company should shift its business focus from label printing to label printers. Because of fierce competition and a slowdown in the company's 12-year-old label manufacturing business, the company was finding its competitive advantage hard to sustain. In contrast, the company's emerging business of producing label printers had been doing well, with 30 per cent annual growth. Although the label manufacturing business had begun to struggle, it was still the main source of company revenue (80 per cent). It was uncertain whether the company's survival and growth could be sustained if it decided to give up the label manufacturing business in order to focus on label printers. Should the company give up the label manufacturing business to make way for the label printer business? Or should it consolidate the two businesses and transition to the label printer business gradually?

Hundreds of thousands of would-be hoteliers have been popping up all around the world, hoping to rent their own homes and apartments to complete strangers through a service called Airbnb. The goal of Airbnb's aspiring hosts was to use the company's website to attract guests who were willing to pay the highest rates to stay in their homes for a short time. For Airbnb, the goal was to improve customer review performance so it could, in turn, increase profits. How could the company achieve its goal? Enter text mining, a technique that allowed businesses to scour Internet pages, decipher the meaning of groups of words, and assign the words a sentiment proxy through the use of a software package. In order for text mining to be useful for Airbnb, its marketing professionals first had to gain access to customer review data on the company's own website. The team then had to analyze the data to find ways to improve property performance. Was the team going to be able to leverage this large amount of data to determine a strategy going forward?

The president of Bankinter, a Spanish bank, decided that the time was right to expand. At the time, the Spanish economy was experiencing a severe downturn and the banking system was going through major reforms. He believed that growth could occur either organically or through acquisitions - as long as the target business complemented Bankinter's present operations and preserved the company's values and organizational culture. His goal was to choose one option, while determining the price that should be paid if an acquisition offer was made. In this case, the purchase would be funded entirely through the issue of additional shares. The offer price would have to be justified to existing shareholders, who would only agree if the acquisition created value for them. At the same time, the success of the merger depended on the offer being accepted, so the price had to be attractive to the target company's shareholders.

Raju Omlet is a restaurant in Dubai that is famous for making egg preparations that appeal to the Indian expatriate population. A father and his son jointly manage the venture, and they are both very happy with the way the business has shaped up in the last two years. An expansion is inevitable, but how should it be carried out? The partners are also exploring the option of offering home delivery service. A meeting has been called to try to find answers to two questions: Would it be possible to sustain the expansion with a single product offering, and would diversifying the product range kill the restaurant's unique competitive advantage?

In March 2015, the managing director of VariCut Electronics Component Company in Shanghai, China, was contemplating whether the company should shift its business focus from label printing to label printers. Because of fierce competition and a slowdown in the company's 12-year-old label manufacturing business, the company was finding its competitive advantage hard to sustain. In contrast, the company's emerging business of producing label printers had been doing well, with 30 per cent annual growth. Although the label manufacturing business had begun to struggle, it was still the main source of company revenue (80 per cent). It was uncertain whether the company's survival and growth could be sustained if it decided to give up the label manufacturing business in order to focus on label printers. Should the company give up the label manufacturing business to make way for the label printer business? Or should it consolidate the two businesses and transition to the label printer business gradually?

This case centers around the Air Products' hostile takeover attempt of Airgas in 2010. Air Products argued that its offer of a 38% premium is generous given Airgas' poor performance, which Air Products attributed to underperforming and entrenched managers at Airgas. On the other hand, Airgas' management argued that the company's recent struggles are cyclical and that Air Products' offer grossly undervalues Airgas' long-run potential. How might Airgas' management credibly communicate its conviction to shareholders? Should Airgas shareholders side with Air Products and accept a certain short term return, or should they side with Airgas' management and accept an uncertain but potentially higher long-term outcome? How should the Airgas board balance its responsibilities to short-term versus long-term shareholders?

Bob Whelan developed an idea with partners that was a seed before his fellowship year and addressed a significant national challenge - college financing - with a creative concept and experience from his years in investment banking. His nonprofit was called 13th Avenue Funding and it provided equity as an alternative to debt for students to finance college. Since he first set out on his journey, he faced a lot of resistance and difficulty in scaling his non-profit aimed at enabling one million low income students to obtain a postsecondary education debt free. Whelan continued to persist and adapt to the changing environment.

In late 2013 and early 2014, Netflix service over the major U.S. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) suffered major slowdowns. What were the causes of these problems? What could Netflix do to solve them?

The case follows PayPal, a digital payments platform that found early success processing online payments for purchases on eBay, which acquired the company in 2002. The case begins by describing the decision by eBay in 2014 to spin off PayPal and the strategic challenges facing its new CEO, Dan Schulman, who encountered significant strategic issues leading PayPal as an independent company. When the separation from eBay finalized in July 2015, PayPal was in the midst of a multi-year technology reconstruction. Additionally, the digital payments landscape had changed dramatically, extending beyond eCommerce into mobile payments, global remittances, peer-to-peer transfers, and offline transactions. The case presents several trials facing Schulman, including how to innovate quickly in a large organization, whether and how to recreate PayPal's vision, and how to both partner and compete successfully with new entrants in the market.

The EMco and SolarT case is presented in a series of four short vignettes involved two women, Carrie and Marguerite, who have a twenty-year friendship. Carrie, a venture capitalist, sits on the board of an energy management company called EMco. When EMco's CEO reports that he is recruiting for a new VP of Sales, Carrie immediately introduces him to Marguerite, a seasoned sales executive. Marguerite soon joins EMco and the next three vignettes explore a series of issues she faces in her role. Vignette A presents a conversation between Carrie and Marguerite, 18 months into Marguerite's tenure, in which Marguerite shares with Carrie that she is considering leaving EMco for a different opportunity, fueled by her desire to become a CEO someday. The second vignette also has Marguerite discussing with Carrie her desire to move on from EMco, but to join SolarT, a solar energy company for which Carrie is also a board member. Finally, Vignette C explores the scenario where Marguerite goes to work for SolarT, which is the arch rival of another company, Blue, for which her father is a board member. All of these vignettes are presented in the context of the ethical decisions both Carrie and Marguerite must make to avoid conflicts of interest in each of these three scenarios.

The EMco and SolarT case is presented in a series of four short vignettes involved two women, Carrie and Marguerite, who have a twenty-year friendship. Carrie, a venture capitalist, sits on the board of an energy management company called EMco. When EMco's CEO reports that he is recruiting for a new VP of Sales, Carrie immediately introduces him to Marguerite, a seasoned sales executive. Marguerite soon joins EMco and the next three vignettes explore a series of issues she faces in her role. Vignette A presents a conversation between Carrie and Marguerite, 18 months into Marguerite's tenure, in which Marguerite shares with Carrie that she is considering leaving EMco for a different opportunity, fueled by her desire to become a CEO someday. The second vignette also has Marguerite discussing with Carrie her desire to move on from EMco, but to join SolarT, a solar energy company for which Carrie is also a board member. Finally, Vignette C explores the scenario where Marguerite goes to work for SolarT, which is the arch rival of another company, Blue, for which her father is a board member. All of these vignettes are presented in the context of the ethical decisions both Carrie and Marguerite must make to avoid conflicts of interest in each of these three scenarios.